Jakob Dylan took the stage at the Castro Theatre and announced: “These are some of the best songs that we are going to get and that’s why we’re still singing them.”

Then he went straight to 1966 for “Go Where You Wanna Go” by the Mamas & the Papas and segued into “Never My Love” by the Association, with his Echo Canyon Band. These pop hits propel “Echo in the Canyon,” a feature-length documentary film for which Dylan serves as both star and executive producer, and were performed live as part of seven-song set for the crowd who saw the documentary during an advance screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April.

“I like to play and I’m thrilled people want to see the movie,” Dylan told The Chronicleduring an interview before the screening. “It’s also one thing we can offer that the next documentary can’t. We can actually bring a little bit of the movie to life for people. That’s cool.”

这week, Dylan returns to San Francisco foranother screening on Thursday, June 6, followed by the nationwide opening of “Echo in the Canyon” on Friday, June 7. While he won’t be performing songs this time, he plans to answer questions — about the film, not about his famous father, Bob Dylan — and share the stories that echo throughout the documentary.

The movie takes off at the moment Dylan gets behind the wheel of a 1967 Pontiac Firebird convertible and turns right off Sunset Boulevard onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Los Angeles. Up there waiting for himare all the musicians who helped form the California folk rock sound of the mid-’60s: Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas. Steve Stills of Buffalo Springfield. Even British devotees Eric Clapton and Graham Nash, and younger disciples Jackson Browneand Tom Petty are featured.

Their stories and songs, including black-and-white televised concert clips, would alone be enough to make a documentary, but Dylan went way beyond that. He put together a supergroup,featuring Beck, Fiona Apple, Cat Power and Norah Jones to re-record those songs in the same Sunset Strip studios as the originals, and topped it off with a concert at the opulent Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

All of these elements — interviews, recordings and concert — merge in the film, which is accompanied by a studio CD that breathes new life into forgotten songs like “It Won’t Be Wrong,” by the Byrds, and “Questions” by Buffalo Springfield.

“We knew it was important to take these songs and not necessarily reinvent them, but represent them today,” Dylan said. “That would be another thing to separate it from a typical documentary.”

At 49, Dylan is old enough to remember first hearing all of these songs on vinyl, at home with his dad, Bob Dylan, and mother, Sara, first in Malibu, then fartherinland after his parents’ divorce.

He was 17 years old and already playing in a high school band that would become the Wallflowers when he ran into Andy Slater, the film’s producer and director. Slater, 62, remembered that moment specifically, when Dylan was brought into the recording studio by his fatherwhen Slater was producing a record by Warren Zevon.

Slater became the manager of the Wallflowers, and later supplied his vintage Firebird and midcentury home used as a set in the film.

“我们没有一个人曾经犯了一个电影,我这nk it’s amazing how far we have gotten with this thing,” Dylan said. “A lot of it has to do with the personalities. Take them away and there is no movie.”

None of these personalities, including Dylan, still live in Laurel Canyon. But that’s a technicality. What counts is that McGuinn was living there when he picked up a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and electrified the folk music of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. That launched folk rock and had musicians flocking to the rental cottages and hippie shacks in the Laurel Canyon hills directly above the Sunset Strip.

The “Echo” in the title is meant to suggest that the musical styles bounced off the hills and reached all the way to England where George Harrison admitted to borrowingMcGuinn’s guitar work in “Bells of Rhymney“to write “If I Needed Someone.” It all happened quickly. Both songs were released in 1965, and the scene was over by the time Buffalo Springfield released“Expecting to Fly”in December 1967.

“There was so much great music floating around that little snippets of it just filtered through you,” said Stephen Stills in the film. “We had this witch’s brew and things would just pop out.”

Dylan, the interviewer, has known most of his subjects since he was a child, which comes across on-screen.

“I didn’t see it as interviews as much as conversations. I’ve been having conversations with people like this my whole life,” he said. “But I don’t pretend to be friends with these people who are also my heroes. They’ve been kind to me, but I’m still nervous to sit and talk with them.”

Dylan was visibly nervous the moment Brian Wilson walked into Sunset Studios and sat down at the piano to tell Dylan he was rehearsing “I Just Wasn’t Made for these Times” in the wrong key. It was a slightly awkward moment for Dylan, but it made the film.

“You can’t script it too much,” he said. “People tell you things and that becomes a story. Then you have to backtrack and fill holes.”

One of these stories is that Michelle Phillips was already involved with singer Denny Doherty by the time the Mamas & the Papas got to Los Angeles. She shows the bathtub shot on their first album cover as proof, with her snuggled up to Doherty — not her husband, bandleader John Phillips. This was before she moved on to dating Gene Clark of the Byrds. “I was a busy girl,” she said in the film.

Only the irreverent David Crosby tried to work Dylan’s father into the conversation. “Crosby would be the one,” he said, but he did not rise to it. “It didn’t really pertain to the story.”

None of Dylan’s heroes turned down his request for an interview, though Neil Young was characteristically cagey, Dylan said. Dylan wanted him for two scenes, an interview and a performance, but only got him screeching on an electric guitar. “Neil had limited time,” he said. “You try to get Neil Young twice, good luck.”

Dylan was lucky enough to get Petty on his Rickenbacker in the film, smiling at the camera. It would turn out to be Petty’s last interview for film. The Rock& Roll Hall of Famer died in October 2017.

“Tom Petty was a wonderful presence in my life,” Dylan told the audience after the Castro screening.

To end the special set with the Echo Canyon Band, Dylan played Petty’s 1981 hit, “The Waiting.” As a vocalist, Dylan’s style is often a low whisper, but that’s not how he sang Petty. From all the way up in the balcony, fans could see his neck muscles strain as he reached for the high notes.

“Right now, more than ever, we need to hear from these types of characters,” Dylan said. “We won’t get people like that anymore.”

“Echo in the Canyon”:Jakob Dylan and Andy Slater are scheduled to appear at these Bay Area opening screenings: 7and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 6. $11.50-$13. Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema,1 Embarcadero Center, S.F.www.landmarktheatres.com; 7:30 p.m. Friday, June 7. $15-$20. Smith Rafael Film Center,1118 Fourth St.,San Rafael.rafaelfilm.cafilm.org; 9 p.m. Friday, June 7. $9.50-$12.50. Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas,2230 Shattuck Ave.,Berkeley.www.landmarktheatres.com

The film is also opening atCinéArts @ Palo Alto Square.